About Simon Cabulea May

Simon Cabulea May is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He received his PhD from Stanford University. His present research project generally concerns conflicts of moral convictions in public deliberation.

The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society Postdoctoral Fellowship, Stanford University

For 2017-2018, the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford seeks to appoint up to four new postdoctoral fellows. Selected fellows will be designated as either Interdisciplinary Ethics Fellows or General Ethics Fellows. The two types of fellows have some distinct training opportunities and responsibilities as described below, but they form a common community at the Center and participate together in the Center’s intellectual life. The programs are described in detail below. We aim to appoint fellows in both programs (four total across the two programs). All applicants will be considered for both types of fellowships, and finalists will be consulted as to their designation as Interdisciplinary Ethics or General Ethics fellows.

Interdisciplinary Ethics Fellowship

2017-18 will be the second year of this new fellowship program at the Center. The program is rooted in the Center’s commitment to bring ethical reflection to bear on pressing social problems. Addressing many of these social problems involves knowledge of the work of social science, law, and the life sciences. The premise of this program is that the normative scholarship of our fellows will be enhanced by engagement with empirically-oriented scholars. To that end, each fellow in the program will be matched with a partner research center at Stanford that is dedicated to interdisciplinary research. The partner centers will be determined based upon selected fellows’ interests. For the 2016-17 year, the partner centers included the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, the Immigration Policy Lab, and the Stanford Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society. To be considered for this fellowship, applicants must have normative training and hold a PhD in Philosophy or Political Science. Scholars with a JD are also eligible so long as their research interests focus on ethical dimensions of public policy or law. Fellows will participate in the regular intellectual life of the partner center and the Center for Ethics in Society (e.g., attend weekly workshops; events; professional training opportunities), interact with undergraduates in the Ethics in Society Program, and contribute to an interdisciplinary ethics community across campus.

General Ethics Fellowship

Some selected fellows will be part of our longstanding postdoctoral program that is more broadly open to candidates with substantial normative research in any area within philosophy or political science. For 2017-18, we are especially interested in candidates with research interests in inequality, global justice, environmental ethics, biomedical ethics, and ethics and technology, but we welcome all applicants with strong normative interests. Applicants must have a PhD in philosophy or political science. Scholars with a JD are also eligible so long as their research interests focus on ethical dimensions of public policy or law. General Ethics Fellows participate in the intellectual life of the Center for Ethics in Society (attend weekly workshops; events; professional training opportunities), teach one class per year, interact with undergraduates in the Ethics in Society Program, and contribute to an interdisciplinary ethics community across the campus.

The Institute of Art and Ideas has a new philosophy podcast series, Philosophy for Our Times. The first ten episodes are up, and include episodes on truth, the self, capital, democracy, and anarchism, with Searle, Blackburn, Midgley, Krugman, and others.

We are pleased to announce that the Fourth Annual Workshop for Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy will take place on June 1-3, 2016 at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.

There will be nine papers at this year’s conference, including four invited papers by the following people:

Alex Voorhoeve (London School of Economics),

Ralf Bader (Oxford),

Adam Swift (Warwick) and Zofia Stemplowska (Oxford),

Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (Aarhus University)

We are issuing a call for papers to fill the remaining five conference slots. Submitted papers should be between 7,500 and 12,000 words including footnotes, should be totally anonymized, and are due by December 1. (The workshop is being held three months earlier than usual, and hence the deadline is three months earlier.) Accepted papers for the conference will receive serious consideration for inclusion in the resulting Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy volume.

We welcome candidates with substantial normative research interests from philosophy or political science. We are especially interested in candidates with research interests in inequality, global justice, environmental ethics, biomedical ethics, and ethics and technology, but we welcome all applicants with strong normative interests. Applicants must have a PhD in philosophy or political science; scholars with a JD or JSD are also eligible so long as their research interests focus on ethical issues with an applied dimension. Postdoctoral fellows teach one class per year, mentor undergraduates in the Ethics in Society Honors Program, and contribute to an interdisciplinary ethics community across the campus.

The appointment term is September 1, 2016 – August 31, 2017. The initial term may be renewed for an additional year. Applicants must have completed all requirements for their PhD by June 30, 2016. Candidates must also be no more than 3 years from the awarding of their degree (i.e., September 2013). The application deadline is December 7, 2015 (5:00 pm Pacific Standard Time).

Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan
Postdoc/Research Fellow
Commences September 1, 2015; one-year term, renewable for second year.
Apply by April 24, 2015 for guaranteed consideration.
$55,000/12 months (plus research stipend)

The holder of this postdoc is expected to participate in the Freedom and Flourishing Project (Prof. Daniel Jacobson, PI) by contributing to its research project on the foundations and central tenets of classical liberalism, and their empirical support; organizing its lecture and roundtable series, which has two events per year; and teaching one course each term of the academic year.

The primary responsibility of the holder of this fellowship is to conduct original research in some area of classical liberal thought, whether historical, empirical, or theoretical. The approach can take any central theme of this intellectual movement, and it can but need not focus on interdisciplinary issues of political economy. The holder is expected to produce and publish a significant body of original work. In addition, we expect the fellowship holder will be appointed at 33.33% effort each fall and winter semester as a Lecturer, delivering one (1) course per term (see below). The postdoc effort would be coordinated so the total effort will be 100% over the 12 months. The fellowship holder will also be responsible for organizing a two-event lecture or roundtable series on a relevant and topical issue, with one event to be scheduled per semester.

Teaching up to one course per term as a Lecturer is the expectation. Courses will be assigned at the discretion of the Chair, in consultation with the postdoc, depending upon the needs the department, qualifications of the post-doc, etc. Teaching duties may include either of the 2 core PPE courses: the gateway to the concentration (PPE 300) or the capstone seminar for seniors (PPE 400), as well as courses at any level of the undergraduate Philosophy program, including introductions. The 33.33% effort Lecturer positions would be covered by the collective bargaining agreement between the U-M and the Lecturers’ Employee Organization. Offers for the Lecturer appointments will be made separately from the Research Fellow offer.

Liberal political philosophers have recently received criticism for their inadequate grasp or unreflective use of the category of religion. Liberal philosophers, it is said, have not sufficiently reflected on the specific trajectory of western secularism. As a result, liberal theories of freedom of religion, of state neutrality, of non-establishment and of the rights of conscience are conceptually, as well as normatively, problematic. This conference will present cutting-edge work in political philosophy that takes these criticisms seriously and offers new perspectives on the normative place of religion in liberal political philosophy.